5 Best Knee Strengthening Exercises

Strong, healthy knees aren't built by doing endless knee exercises—they're built by developing strength, control, and resilience throughout the entire lower body.

In this episode of The Black Lion Blueprint, I break down my five favorite knee strengthening exercises and explain why they consistently appear in my programming. We'll cover how stronger calves, hamstrings, glutes, and hips all contribute to healthier knees, along with the most common mistakes to avoid and simple progressions you can use regardless of your experience level.

Whether your goal is lifting heavier, staying active, or improving your durability for sports and everyday life, these exercises can help you build a stronger foundation.

If you want help applying this to your training, book a free call.

https://www.blacklionperformance.com/strategycall 

Not ready for a call yet?

Free Guide - download The Full-Body Workout Blueprint here: https://black-lion-performance-coaching.kit.com/e3a299048d 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the Black Lion Blueprint. In this episode, we are talking about five knee strengthening exercises. And I mean my five favorite knee strengthening exercises because there is no real quote unquote best, but there are exercises that I enjoy the most. So these exercises help improve your performance and also just long-term durability of your knees because they help improve overall strength, coordination, balance, stability, and your ability to, you know, handle loads and forces whenever it comes to the activities that you enjoy and just keeping your knees healthy overall. Now, when I do talk about knee strength, I'm not just talking about building quad strength. I'm talking about improving the strength of your overall lower body. So every muscle in that area from your hips all the way down to your calves and ankles, so that way your knee takes on less load and less force when you are performing certain movements and activities such as lunging, running, jumping, um, stepping, walking, pivoting, all those different types of things. Okay. So we're talking about the whole entire lower extremity, and these are my five favorite exercises. Let's get right into it. So the first one is calf raises. So why calf raises? Right. This is not even close to what you would think as a knee exercise, but calf raises and calf strength in general helps you absorb forces when you are walking, running, jumping, pivoting, stepping to the left, stepping to the right. We're not about to get into song, but it helps absorb the forces so that way your knee takes on less stress load throughout, and you keep your knee a little bit healthier overall with that absorption of those forces as well. It also helps with uh power production too. So when whenever you are jumping and you're running and you're pushing off of one leg, if your calves aren't strong enough to help assist or they're not assisting enough, then your knee can take on a lot more force and that can wear your knee out and just reduce your overall strength capacity and ability to generate force through the ground to build up quad strength or strength to support that knee joint in general. So again, if there are things that prevent us from uh performing knee movements or exercises or movements that's gonna support our knee joint, then we're not actually contributing to the overall health uh and function and strength of that knee. Um, so how? So starting off with uh two-legg calf raises. So, you know, calf raises in general uh are an awkward movement because if you're not using some type of support, uh you can kind of lose your balance. So you want to use one dumbbell in one hand and kind of support yourself on a bench or with uh a wall or even a rig, something that you can support yourself. And you can alternate hands, whichever you want to use for the dumbbell or the kettlebell or whatever you're using to load up your calf raises. You start off with single uh double leg calf raises and then you can move into single leg calf raises for more loading down the line. Um, essentially, you'll shoot for like 12 repetitions or so for the calf raises and three sets of 12. And then after you do that three sets of 12 and you're loading it up pretty good, you can start to transition into those um uh single leg calf raises. Now you could also use a deficit. So you're going off of maybe a plate or off of a step, um, not off of a bench that's way too high, in order to improve some ankle range of motion as well and to get a bigger stretch in that calf. So um common mistakes with the calf raises too, is just kind of rushing through the movement. So if you're rushing through the calf raise, you're not really getting the most out of that movement. So you want to do slow and controlled up. You want to pause for a second at the top, and then you also want to do a slow and controlled motion on the bottom so you can get the most benefit out of each and every repetition when you're doing your calf raises. So that was number one. Moving on to number two is the Romanian deadlifts or RDLs. So we're talking about improving now your posterior chain, your hamstrings and your glutes, and that's just gonna help shift some of that load onto that posterior aspect instead of on that knee joint. So we're balancing out the loads that's going through that knee joint when we improve our posterior chain muscle, so those hamstrings and the glutes as well. Um, so force is distributed more equally. Now, how do we start with these? I usually start off my clients with dumbbells. So all of these exercises are typically exercises that are almost always in most of my clients' programs. So starting off with dumbbells, depending on your goal, right? If strength is very relative, I need to mention that strength is very relative. So if your goal is just to be able to function for life and just to, you know, go on some hikes here and there, um, be able to tolerate like a simple 5k run, then you don't need that much strength. So you can get all the strength that you need really out of dumbbells. Now, if your goal is to do a powerlifting meet competition or whatever, you might want to start doing barbells. If you enjoy lifting barbells and lifting heavier weight, then yes, you'll progress to barbell movement. And if you have more training experience and you plan on doing things that require a lot more forces through the legs, um, maybe field sports or whatever, you're a recreational athlete that you kind of you are kind of competitive in those recreational sports, then yes, we want to start to load it up a little bit more so that way you can tolerate the training and the forces that go through your lower body and your knee during those movements. So the RDLs, generally speaking, I start off with dumbbells in each hand uh for this movement, and then you can progress to single leg or staggered stance movements if you want to one increase the load demand on the hamstrings and the glutes during the movement, but then also increase the balance demands of those movements. And also if your goal is overall like really like a lot of a huge amount of strength, I said a lot of amount of strength, a huge amount of strength, then um you want to you know progress to barbells eventually. If you're already well experienced, you could already start off with the barbell RDL. Okay. I really like this movement too because it's less stressful than the traditional deadlift on the body overall. I use it uh specifically for some of my um clients who have lower back pain, maybe. Uh, they might be dealing with some hip issues. And then a lot of my athletes, maybe if we're closer towards a competition, we might be doing RDLs more or we might be doing like rack pulls more. But RDLs essentially is less stress on the body overall, and also you can work around a lot of different injuries and mobility limitations as well. So I really enjoy the RDL over a lot of other um pulling exercises from the ground. So a common mistake here is locking your knees out throughout the movement. So that's gonna reduce the overall load that you can actually use with this movement, and it requires a lot more mobility if you're keeping your knees locked. So we want the knees loose during the movement, but we don't want them bending like we're trying to go into a squat as we're doing this motion. So the knees are loose. Basically, your calves are almost essentially uh, or the front of your shin is perpendicular to the ground. So just think about that whenever you're going through the movement. If your grip starts to become a limiter, you want to use, especially for dumbbells and you're trying to build up more strength, you don't have access to a barbell, you want to use lifting straps for this movement, especially if our grip is not our main focus for this. If we're trying to enhance the strength of our lower body, our knees, then we want to use um lifting straps as we get to those heavier dumbbell weights. And also, if your grip becomes a limiter, you can go ahead and just graduate to barbells because the dumbbells typically require a lot more uh grip strength in um with this specific movement. The other mistake is also um letting the dumbbells drift away or the barbell drift away from your body. So the barbell being further away from your body just puts more stress on the lower back overall. So you want to try and keep that barbell close to the body, almost like brushing your shins as you go through the whole entire uh movement. The next exercise is the trap bar deadlift. So the trap bar deadlift is one of my favorite exercises overall when it comes to all of these lower body exercises, because you can lift some really heavy weight with this movement. And also it's very easy on the body from beginner to advanced athletes to people who are banged up with hip injuries, uh knee injuries to low back injuries, you name it. This is a great exercise for producing a great amount of strength and force through the ground. Um, and it's really easy on the body compared to your traditional back squats and your deadlifts. So it's kind of a blend between the two. I call it trap bar deadlift, but it's really more of like a kind of a quarter squat lift, if anything else. Um, because when I have my clients perform it, it's not like a bending motion, a hinging motion. It's more so like a squatting motion. Um, but you still get a good amount of strength through the hips, the the quads, and um the knees through throughout this movement. So uh how? So typically the setup you will have your feet about hip width to shoulder width apart. Uh, that's gonna give you the best ability to generate the most amount of force throughout this this specific movement. If your feet are too wide, you won't be able to the push out as much or get as much force from it. And then also the other mistake is your hand position. So if your hand isn't centered on the bar and is too far forward or too far back, then that's gonna require a lot more grip strength and you won't be able to use as heavy loads as you would if you were to just center your hands on the bar. And again, the same concept goes with this one as well. If your grip starts to become the limiter, which is a great thing, that means you're lifting some pretty heavy load, then you want to start to use lifting straps, especially if our focus is at this moment to build um leg strength. Okay. So the next movement is rear-footed elevated split squats. Um, now before I get into the rear footed elevated split squats, I do want to mention that I'll I'll talk about programming some of these exercises at the end um of this whole entire thing. Okay, so don't worry about programming and where that fits in. I'll talk about that towards the end. But rear footed elevated split squats, um, I really love this exercise. It's very challenging. It's a very challenging exercise. Um, I have a love-hate relationship with it, and so do all of my clients that I give this to because you can build a great amount of leg strength, single leg strength, and balance coordination uh with this movement, but it is very challenging and taxing because of the range of motion that you have to go through with this movement and the range of motion requirements through your hip when you're um performing this exercise, this exercise. Now, I like this one compared to the traditional split squat to where your feet are on the ground, both feet are on the ground, compared to your leg being elevated on this one. Um, so if you can imagine it, I say rear footer elevated split squat, but we also call it Bulgarian split squats, right? So with this one, with your back leg elevated, you're usually putting more load now through that leg. So just that shift, you're already adding more weight. So think about doing a split squat with 25 pound dumbbells in each hand. Now transitioning to rear footer elevated split squats with 25 dumbbell pound dumbbells in each hand, you are lifting heavier than you were with just the regular split squat. So um, generally speaking, you'll have to start off with, you can have two dumbbells in each hand for this particular exercise to help out with the balance. It helps balance your body out a little bit more so you don't have to worry so much about the stability component. Now, if you want to emphasize um lateral hip strength, so you want to emphasize the glute medious and the glute minimus, then you can have a dumbbell in the opposite side hand. So now that that lateral hip is getting a little bit more stress and has to work a little bit harder throughout that movement. And if you want to stress or emphasize the adductors, then you can keep it hold a dumbbell in the same side hand as the working leg. Um, and then also if you want to increase the the load demands, you can go ahead and add a barbell to this movement. So in the front rack or in the back rack when you are performing this exercise. Now that requires a little bit more stability because the weight is further away from your basic support when you're performing a barbell rear foot-elevated split squat compared to a dumbbell rear foot-elevated split squat. So there is a shift in like the balance demands for that um exercise. So you want to make sure that you you've almost topped off, topped, topped out with the weight that you can use for the dumbbells with um the rear foot-elevated split squat compared to the weight that you can use for the um before you move on to the barbell. Now, so a common mistake here is um standing too far away from the the bench that you have your foot elevated on or whatever uh surface you have your foot elevated on. If you stand too far away, you just put a lot more stress um through the groin area and then also on the hip flexor area as well. So you want to make sure that I usually go by the rule of three paces out. So the first pace is your calves are gonna be against whatever surface that you're you're um using, elevating your back leg on, and then you're gonna step three paces out, one foot in front of the other, and then you start from there. And generally speaking, when you're going down, your back knee should almost be able to tap the ground, uh depending on your anatomy, and then also how high your bench or your surface is as well. Um, but you do want a good bend in that back knee as you go down into that movement, um, so that way you're not putting so much strain um on your groin area and your hip flexors. All right, so the next and final one is the reverse lunge. I love this exercise, and pretty much if there's one single leg exercise that I will give almost anyone, it'll be a reverse lunge. The reverse lunge, it helps, it's it's kind of a it's more of a dynamic movement compared to some of the other ones because your feet are static in a lot of the other exercises. And this one, you're moving with it, but you're moving in a way that's more controlled and you don't have to absorb so much force. So the reverse lunge is really good on the knees compared to like the walking lunge or the forward lunge. So most of my clients and anybody that I would give this to, I've I cannot recall any of the people that I've trained having a knee issue or any type of knee discomfort with the reverse lunge. So it is a really good exercise to build some single leg strength, um, stability and coordination without putting a lot of stress on the knee. And especially if you have a history of dealing with knee issues, this is a really good one too. Um, so again, just like the other single leg exercise, the rear foot-elevated split squat, you want to start off with uh two dumbbells in each hand. So that way you you build up the movement proficiency first and you don't have to worry about the balance components too much, and you get the most out of the exercise. Usually, if you have two dumbbells, you you're loading it up a little bit more. And then also you don't have it's not much of a stability component because when there's more stability required for the movement and more instability in a movement, you can't generate as much force or essentially as much strength in that movement. Um, so that way you're you're reducing the amount of load that you can use for that exercise. So, just like the other one, if you want to emphasize lateral hip strength or adductor strength, you can add a dumbbell to either side of your body just using one dumbbell. You can also hold a dumbbell or a kettlebell in the goblet position to add a little bit more uh core stability and um movement proficiency. Because when you add in a goblet position, sometimes it can help with pelvic stacking, and pelvic stacking helps align things a little bit more throughout the hips so that way you can go into the movement a little bit more better. Um, and I've seen that in my training and how it feels for me and then also a lot of my clients. But you also have to perform it correctly too. If you have a dumbbell or a kettlebell in a goblet position, but then you're also like arching through your back extensively, then you're not really stacking that pelvis um in the way that I'm talking about right now. Um, again, you could also use this with a barbell. I, if there's any movement that I'll use as a main lift to build single leg strength, it would be the reverse lunge, um the back rack reverse lunge. Um, because it mimics if we're trying to build leg strength or single leg strength for to improve the back squat, it's gonna mimic that back squat position. But now we're really hitting that one one leg and reducing that um the deficit that you may have there. And then also you can just load it up a lot more and you can control that movement a lot better than you would if you're doing a split squat and you're a little unsteady, or if you're doing a real rear-footed elevated split squat and you don't have really good range of motion, um, and it's very challenging for you to get into a deep position for that one. So if there's any exercise, it would literally be the back rack reverse lunge. If I'm really trying to hammer some single leg strength, back rack reverse lunge. Um, so again, here the common mistake would be just support step length. So if you're stepping back and you're basically step length, if you're stepping too short or too far back, um essentially you want your knee to be directly under your hips at the bottom of the movement. So when you're stepping back. So in that position, your shin should be about perpendicular to the ground, maybe a little bit more forward. Um, but it should essentially be about that position uh at the bottom of that movement. Again, if you step too short, you're not gonna be able to lift as heavy of a load as you would if you stepped in the right position. If you step too far back, you're gonna put a lot more strain and stress through the hips, um, adductor area, groin area, and then also the hip flexors and potentially like irritate some structures um in that. All right. So, talking about the programming, like I mentioned before, so where do you place these exercises in your um program? Do you have to do all these exercises? No, you don't. Um, you don't have to do all these exercises, one squat movement or lunge variation um and one hinge or bending uh variation is plenty for most people. Um, so really you want to focus in on a specific few movements. So if your goal is building hamstrings and the glutes, prioritize the bending motion in your workout for that day. If your focus is quads and glutes, then you can prioritize the squat and lunge patterns for that day. On both of those days of your prioritizing, you're gonna have some type of calf work in there too. Okay. But a simple progression, let's just say if we're using these as accessory exercises to our main compound lift, you would do three sets of 10 to 12 reps for four weeks. Um, and then the next four weeks, you could say we're using the reverse lunge. Then you're gonna do three sets of eight to ten reps for another four weeks, and then three sets of six to eight reps for another four weeks. And that's all through the reverse lunge. Anticipating that you're able to increase the load consistently throughout that movement in the variation that you're doing it in. So if we're using this as a compound lift, um, as our main compound lift, then yes, the reps may be a little bit lower, but this all depends on your training age, your experience with the movement, et cetera, et cetera. But if we're just talking about overall general knee strengthening and health, this that's a good starting point because it's gonna give your body some time to adapt and be prepared for those heavier loads than just jumping into some heavier loads with your body not prepared for those heavier loads, which you can strain some things if you jump into it like that. And those are my five favorite knee strengthening exercises. Now, if you want more detailed information on how to actually perform these exercises, you can go to the link in the description below and for my how-to library, and that's gonna give you everything that you need to know, more detail into how to perform these actual exercises appropriately. And if you want help applying all the concepts that we mentioned in these exercises into your training program, you can book a free strategy call with me, and then I can pretty much guide you and help you figure out which exercises are going to be best for you based on your situation. This is a free call, not a sales call. It's me pretty much just paying it for it, helping you figure out what's gonna be best for you moving forward in your fitness journey. As always, thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you in the next one.